The Boys are Back - with Damage, A1, 911 and 5ive - and the tour will be helping vulnerable children along the way

But things couldn't be much more different for Andrez Harriott of R&B boyband Damage.

Along with fellow ’90s acts 5ive, A1 and 911 they’re on the nationwide Boys Are Back tour, which calls in at Portsmouth and Southampton Guildhalls later this month.

During the day times on tour, however, Andrez will be visiting schools to run workshops through his charity foundation, The Liminality Group (TLG), which helps young people at risk of exclusion from school or who are involved in anti-social behaviour, gangs, exploitation, knife crime and offending.

Back in the 1990s, Damage sold millions of singles and albums, scoring top 10 hits with the likes of Forever, Love Guaranteed and a cover of Eric Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight.

When the band split in 2002, Andrez explains what happened next: ‘I was DJing at the time all over Europe, all these different places, and my wife said to me: “Well, what’s the plan? What do you want to do moving forward?”

He knew he wanted to work with young people and help them make the best of their lives, while helping them steer clear of trouble.

‘I toured the world from a very young age, so I was able to share some of those life experiences.

‘And so I started working in a charity, and pretty quickly became a staff member in a youth offending service and that's really where I did my 10,000 hours. I spent nearly a decade learning about how young people become who they become and how some go on to commit some of the most heinous offences – and also what services are in place to support them.

‘During that time, in parallel, I went off and did my first degree which was in criminology and sociology. I got a first class honours in that, so that really helped me to embed my knowledge theoretically.’

In 2013 he set up TLG, which has gone on to work with about 600 young people in prison, and helped train 300 prison officers, plus deliver workshops to thousands more children in schools.

‘Then I went off and did my masters, and that was in organisational consultancy and leadership. So mixing all of this together has really given me a strong foundation to be able to provide services to kids that can bring about a really strong outcome, a good outcome, for them.

‘The aim of our organisation is to change the trajectory of children who are most at risk of getting involved in criminality or being exploited, whilst also working with children who are currently in the system and trying to prevent them reoffending, so we’re looking at it from two ends.’

So, Andrez will be visiting schools at each town and city where the tour stops to deliver a workshop called Letters From Inside.

‘I’ve never toured like this before, this is a new thing for me, but I have visited many, many schools in London and work with hundreds and hundreds of children, so it was a no-brainer to say, if we're going to be touring nationally, let's go and deliver workshops in the schools.

‘We’re basically going to tell the messages from young people in prison – letters from inside – and act as a deterrent for children becoming involved in crime.

‘I work with children who are under the age of 18, in prison, who are doing 24 years for committing a murder. We work with children who were sexually offending, children who were holding firearms and massive amounts of drugs – the things that you get from these kids, they say: “Go back into schools and tell the kids how important education is. Tell them, somebody knows that their family dynamics are challenging at the moment, but also tell them that they don't want to get a 24-year sentence and it can all happen very quickly”.’

Due to the age of the youngsters the charity works with, very few of them have heard of Damage before he meets them.

As Andrez admits: ‘If you ever want to be humbled as 41-year-old, go in front of a group of kids who don’t know anything about you – and then you have to build that rapport.

‘But then what they’ll do is they’ll go home, or if they’re in prison, they’ll pick up the phone, and speak to their family and their parents will know, they’ll say, yeah, I remember them, blah, blah, blah. It’s great.

‘Once I get into the details of the magnitude of how many records we've sold and the experiences I had as a kid – private jets and airports being closed for us, they get the whole spiel, it gets kids going: “Yeah, I want to listen to his story”.’

Andrez knows they are one group among many in this fight, but he feels TLG plays its part.

‘No one organisation has got the solution, no one strategy is the solution, but what we're doing is targeting those kids who are most at risk.

‘Some of these kids, their stories are harrowing - and that doesn't negate their responsibility in the offence they've committed, but when children are sexually abused when they’re three and neglected and physically harmed, they see domestic violence in the home, they skip from school to school, it’s no wonder that at some point it's going to manifest itself in their behaviour.

‘Our organisation really tries to target the ones who are most at risk of becoming involved in this stuff.’

One wonders if there is something from Andrez’s past that led him down this route – and perhaps there is, but not in the way you might suspect.

‘My mother's been a social worker for 30 years, my father has been a DJ and a musician for over 30 years.

‘We've got a lot of really incredible people in our family. So I don’t come from a family where I had difficult experiences growing up, which is why I’m doing this work. It’s the complete opposite.’

And he explains, the smallest incident can have knock-on effects that sends even good children down a dark path.

‘Anyone of us could have got into anything. And it could be the smallest thing – likw throwing a brick through a window and getting done for criminal damages, but then that puts you in the system.

‘And then you go to school and people have an interpretation of who you are, and you become labeled as a troublemaker.

‘And then you hang out with other kids who are involved in little petty stuff.

‘If you do that consistently over a period of time, a good child can find themselves involved with the police. So yes, it could have happened to anybody, but I come from a very strong family.’

Back on the musical front, Damage reunited in 2010 for sporadic performances.

‘We hadn't spoken in the best part of 10 years and we just decided that we had such an epic relationship that we shouldn't just let it be lost.

‘We spoke to a musical agent and said: “Are there any opportunities for shows?” They put an email out and our diaries got pretty much booked up, so we knew there was still an appetite, that people wanted to see Damage. Off the back of that we started talking to ITV, and then we got into The Big Reunion.’

The ITV2 show reunited pop acts from the previous decade or so and put them back on stage. It proved to be a surprise hit. Damage appeared in the second series in 2014 alongside 3T, A1, Damage, Eternal, Girl Thing, and a ‘supergroup’ called 5th Story. (911 and 5ive featured in the first series.)

‘From there it just kind of spiralled and we’ve been performing again for the last 10 years.’

The group have actually been together longer now than first time around.

‘Yeah, it's been a whole different experience, and it's been more fun actually, because we're older now, and…’ Wiser? ‘Yeah, wiser’ he laughs. ‘And we’re able to manage it in a different way.

‘You have to rehearse a bit more now, and take care of your body in a different way, eat healthier. But apart from that we still have a lot of fun – there’s no doom and gloom, it's an incredible opportunity.’

And he says all of the bands get on well, and they're all committed to giving a good night out

‘We want to make sure that when the fans turn up, they get to walk down memory lane that they get a real performance – and they’re going to get that from these four bands, definitely.’

For more information about TLG go to tlguk.co.uk.

The Boys Are Back tour is at Portsmouth Guildhall on March 18 and the O2 Guildhall, Southampton on March 21. Go to nvite.com/community/theboysareback2020.